The General Services Administration
Summary
The government's landlord, purchasing agent, and identity-verification front door obligated $42.39 billion and employed 9,922 people in FY2026 -- but 46 percent of that money is contract dollars GSA passes through to vendors on other federal agencies' behalf, not spending on itself.
What is this organization?
What does it do?
's Public Buildings Service manages more than 360 million rentable square feet of federal workspace in over 2,200 communities, housing hundreds of thousands of federal employees. Through its Multiple Award Schedule program, federal agencies purchased over $50.6 billion of commercial products and services in FY2025 using contracts negotiates and administers government-wide. Fleet provides full-service vehicle leases for more than 230,000 non-tactical vehicles to federal agencies each year and purchases up to 40,000 more on their behalf.
What does it cost to run — money and people?
's FY2026 enacted total obligations reached $42.39 billion, funding 9,922 full-time-equivalent positions -- down from 13,119 FTEs the year before. Most of that is not new taxpayer money: direct annual appropriations were just $419.8 million in FY2026; the rest is collections from client agencies paying for rented space and goods it buys on their behalf, led by $19.6 billion in advisory and assistance services passed through to contractors. Against 341.8 million U.S. residents⧉, that's $124.02 per person -- the government's footprint moving through , not a tax bill.
View data as table
| Advisory & assistance services | 19,626 | mostly Multiple Award Schedule and other contracts GSA obligates on client agencies' behalf |
|---|---|---|
| Rental payments to others | 5,721 | leased office space rent |
| Equipment | 4,730 | incl. GSA Fleet vehicle purchases/leases for agencies |
| Land and structures | 4,035 | federally owned building construction/acquisition |
| Operation & maintenance of facilities | 2,326 | running GSA-owned buildings |
| Supplies and materials | 1,894 | |
| Personnel comp. & benefits | 1,964 | GSA's own 9,922 FTEs' salaries and benefits |
| All other object classes | 2,095 | travel, utilities, other services, interest, etc. (residual) |
Why is it good for society?
's Office of Inspector General checks the buying power that scale gives it: in FY2025 its contract audits identified more than $556 million in cost avoidances and recoveries from Multiple Award Schedule contractors who overcharged agencies, overstated labor rates, or filed incomplete pricing proposals. Investigators separately uncovered a scheme in which two subcontractors paid a GSA contracting officer over $100,000 in bribes for construction work, and a case that cost the government $624,250 in charges for goods never delivered. Without it, the discipline behind 's prices on $50 billion a year in contracts goes largely unchecked.
- 's FY2026 obligations ($42.39B) are 46 percent Multiple Award Schedule and other contract dollars passed through to vendors for client agencies -- its own direct taxpayer appropriation was $419.8 million, and its own workforce costs were $1.96 billion.
- 's own workforce shrank sharply: 9,922 FTEs enacted for FY2026, down from 13,119 actual FTEs the year before.
Your handles.* Suspect fraud, waste, or abuse in a contract or federally owned building? File a confidential or anonymous report with the GSA Office of Inspector General Hotline. Trouble verifying your identity for a federal benefit through Login.gov? Start at its Help Center. Running a business that wants a shot at 's Multiple Award Schedule contracts? 's guide to getting on schedule walks through the process.
Sources(5) ▾
- U.S. General Services Administration, General Services Administration FY 2027 Congressional Justification (2026-04-29) — 's own budget submission to its appropriations subcommittees for FY2027, dated (per PDF metadata) April 29, 2026. Its Summary volume carries the FY2025 actual / FY2026 enacted / FY2027 request tables for 's total obligations and total (the source for this entry's budget and headcount KPIs and the object-classification chart), its real-estate and procurement workload counts, and its Office of Inspector General section's FY2025 audit-recovery and fraud-case figures. A single Wayback save request for this URL returned HTTP 520 (archive.org's save-page-now service was in an outage at capture time); the direct URL is the one-click original-document link. gsa.gov
- U.S. General Services Administration, Our mission's evolution — 's own official history page, giving the July 1, 1949 establishment date, President Truman's role, and the list of predecessor agencies consolidated. No Wayback capture attempted separately (same-outage window as doc-gsa-fy2027-cj); the direct gsa.gov URL is the one-click original-document link. gsa.gov
- Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives (United States Code), 40 U.S.C. § 301 -- Establishment (2002-08-21) — The current codification of 's statutory establishment as an executive-branch agency; derives from the Act of June 30, 1949, ch. 288, title I, section 101(a), 63 Stat. 379 (the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949), as recodified by Pub. L. 107-217 (Aug. 21, 2002). uscode.house.gov
- Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives (United States Code), 40 U.S.C. § 302 -- Administrator of General Services (2002-08-21) — Statutory basis for the Administrator of General Services as 's head, appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. uscode.house.gov
- U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Population Growth Slows Due to Historic Decline in Net International Migration (Vintage 2025 national population estimate) (2026-01-27) — The Census Bureau's own Vintage 2025 national population estimate release, giving the U.S. resident population as of July 1, 2025 -- the per-resident denominator for this entry's cost-per-person KPI, per better_metrics.md's sourced-denominator discipline. Wayback capture timestamp is from the same-day capture of this identical URL for a companion Good Citizen entry published earlier the same day. census.gov · original document
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The General Services Administration is an executive-branch agency established by the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949, effective July 1, 1949, when it consolidated six existing units -- including the National Archives Establishment, the Public Buildings Administration, and the Bureau of Federal Supply. Codified at 40 U.S.C. § 301, is led by an Administrator appointed by the President with Senate confirmation. It functions as the federal government's landlord, purchasing agent, and -- through Login.gov -- its front door for identity verification online.